Posts Tagged ‘Bible’

Dudes. I had no idea that unicorns are named in the Bible. Not kidding.

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? 10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

That’s from the book of Job, chapter 39, verses 9 and 10, King James version. That’s right: King James version. The one that so many fringe-dwellers claim is the best and greatest English translation of the Bible.

Some more recent translations substitute “wild ox” for “unicorn”.

Does this mean that the folks who support the Invisible Pink Unicorn have a Biblical basis for their arguments?

Texas (“Famous for Executions”) killed another man November 5. I’m not bringing this up because there was evidence the guy was innocent (haven’t heard of any) or because I have a serious problem with the death penalty (I do), but because of how jurors arrived at his sentence. The jury consulted the Bible to choose the sentence for the convicted murderer.

And what passage out of all of the Bible did the jurors close in on? Not the bit about “turning the other cheek”. Not the bit about “forgiving seven times 70 times”. Not the bit about casting the first stone. Nooooo. They picked Numbers chapter 35, verse 16:

And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

That’s right. They chose the death penalty, not necessarily because of the nastiness of the crime (a shooting during a burglary), but because a line of the Bible said it was the fitting penalty for killing someone with “an instrument of iron”, like a gun.

One of the jurors was interviewed later by a Danish reporter.

He told the journalist he believed “the Bible is truth from page 1 to the last page”, and that if civil law and biblical law were in conflict, the latter should prevail. He said that if he had been told he could not consult the Bible, “I would have left the courtroom”.

I’m officially terrified. Where is my separation of church and state? Why didn’t this get thrown out on appeal? Is there a loophole here that I don’t know about?

I’m also glad that I don’t live in Texas. Of course, I was already glad about that.

Just when I thought I couldn’t be more disgusted with right-wing Bible-thumpers, I find this on richarddawkins.net‘s Twitter stream. The people behind the Conservapedia (who think Wikipedia has too much of a liberal bias, which makes it interesting that they use Wikipedia’s software to run their site) have started working on a new translation of the Bible. From their website:

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles….

Benefits include:

mastery of the Bible, which is priceless

mastery of the English language, which is valuable

thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version

benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses

liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

The blood boils. Any version of the Bible in public schools? Hell. No.

And speaking of hell, one of the guidelines for this translation is

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Great. Just great. Let’s open people’s minds with stories of eternal torture! That’ll do the trick!

I wish I could say I was making this up. But I’m not. Those quotes come directly from the project’s website (which I can’t bring myself to link to).